I first read about this movie when I looked at the "Harvey Lampoon" annual worst movie lists in a movie source book and it mentioned Buck Henry's losing in a strip poker game. I later found out it was directed by Milos Forman a few years before winning the Oscar for One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest which increased my curiosity factor. What I found fascinating about this movie was that despite being initially about a teenage girl (Linnea Heacock) running away and her father (Henry) looking for her, it goes on other tangents like to a musical audition that the teen girl goes to which features some good performances like that of an about-to-emerge Carly Simon or another singer named Bobo Bates who would later win an Oscer as Kathy Bates. Or when Henry goes to a café, looks at pictures of other missing teens, finds a picture of one already there and contacts the number of that teen's mother (Audra Lindley) who we find out is a member of the Society for the Parents of Lost Children. That leads to another scene of her, Buck, and their spouses (Paul Benedict and Lynn Carlin, respectively) going to some ball where they take some marijuana from Vincent Schiavelli which leads to that strip poker game. Other notable appearances are those of Georgia Engel, Allen Garfield, and the Ike and Tina Turner Revue at a concert appearance. The movie goes from the quietly dramatic to the absurdly comical in natural progression and doesn't have a clear-cut ending but it's such a nonlinear treat, one doesn't care by then. Unfortunately, since Taking Off has never been on Beta, VHS, or DVD, it wasn't until it just emerged on YouTube that I finally got to see this...